Anchored-Out
1-15-04
Every Wednesday, our church hosts a free lunch for those in the community of Sausalito who need it. It's prepared and served by Susanne Parsells and a team of other volunteers from our church and neighboring congregations. I would refrain from calling it a "soup kitchen", because the food is better than that term might suggest. And I'd refrain from calling it a "homeless" program because almost all of those who come to the meal have some kind of home, even if it might not meet standard cultural expectations. Here in Sausalito, that standard is already stretched, because so many people live on boats tied to the docks along the water. These boats have electrical, water and sewer hookups to the docks. But there is another group of boat dwellers - the "anchored-outs" - many of whom are regulars at our Wednesday meal. Their boats float away from the docks, anchored out in Richardson Bay (in some cases, tethered to buoys chained to old car engines sunk at the bottom). 80-odd of these boats dot the water, and from them their dwellers venture to land on rubber rafts or rowboats to get food, water, and fuel. It is the last frontier of freedom in America -- one of the last places a person can live on "the commons" without paying rent of any kind. But even the freest of the free must be tied down somehow, tethered to an anchor so that their boats can stay afloat in the wild weather of winter, held close enough to land to get supplies. Some of these boat dwellers have very little income, and as a result our Wednesday meal is a welcome source both of physical and social nutrition. As I was eating the lunch a few weeks ago, I sat by two "anchored-out" fellows who were deliberating about what kind of marine plywood was the best for patching a boat.... a conversation I never would have heard in my previous career, directing an agency that served the "land-lubber" homeless on the Peninsula.
In the early days of the Christian church, "anchorites" were people who withdrew from society and lived in seclusion to practice spiritual disciplines. Many of them subsisted on very sparse and simple fare, and lived in caves in the wilderness. They were free from the cares and trials of community life, but they were still "anchored" -- tethered tightly to God through their prayerful meditations. Julian of Norwich was a 14th-century English "anchoritess" - a lay woman who retreated from the world to pray and compose classic essays on Christian spirituality. "I can never have full rest nor true bliss," she wrote, "till I am so fastened to Him that there is no created thing between my God and me."
Lest we get carried away with freedom, and go adrift and sink against life's rocky shoals, let us drop anchor into God through the kind of spiritual practice that Julian described, a practice that "fastens" us to our Source and our Goal. The anchor can be worship. It can be private prayer. It can be soul-centered journaling, writing, or artistry. It can be physical exercise that is focused on making our bodies into healthy temples where the Spirit can reside. It can be works of service that make us channels for the Compassion that is God. We were created to be free, but to stay free we still need tethers. May the church be a resting place for all those who are "anchored-out" -- literally or figuratively!